Come Lie With Me - Linda Howard [14]
They could have been snakes from the way he was staring at them. She had to admit that the collection was a little impressive. Alberta had counted them out exactly as Dione had instructed, and she knew that there were nineteen pills.
“I’m not taking them!”
“You’re taking them. You need them. You’ll need them even more after a few days of therapy. Besides, you don’t get anything to eat until after you’ve taken them.”
He wasn’t a good loser. He snatched them up and swallowed them several at a time, washing them down with gulps of water. “There,” he snarled. “I’ve taken the damned things.”
“Thank you,” she said gravely.
Alberta had evidently been listening, because she promptly entered with their breakfast trays. He looked at his grapefruit half, whole wheat toast, eggs, bacon and milk as if it were slop. “I want a blueberry waffle,” he said.
“Sorry,” Dione said. “That’s not on your diet. Too sweet. Eat your grapefruit.”
“I hate grapefruit.”
“You need the vitamin C.”
“I just took a year’s supply of vitamin C!”
“Look,” she said sweetly, “this is your breakfast. Eat it or do without. You’re not getting a blueberry waffle.”
He threw it at her.
She’d been expecting something like that, and ducked gracefully. The plate crashed against the wall. She collapsed against the table, the laughter that she’d been holding in all morning finally bursting out of her in great whoops. His hair was practically standing on end, he was so angry. He was beautiful! His cobalt blue eyes were as vivid as sapphires; his face was alive with color.
As dignified as a queen, Alberta marched out of the kitchen with an identical tray and set it before him. “She said you’d probably throw the first one,” she said without inflection.
Knowing that he’d acted exactly as Dione had predicted made him even angrier, but now he was stymied. He didn’t know what to do, afraid that whatever he did, she would have anticipated it. Finally he did nothing. He ate silently, pushing the food into his mouth with determined movements, then balked again at the milk.
“I can’t stand milk. Surely coffee can’t hurt!”
“It won’t hurt, but it won’t help, either. Let’s make a deal,” she offered. “Drink the milk, which you need for the calcium, and then you can have coffee.”
He took a deep breath and drained the milk glass.
Alberta brought in coffee. The remainder of the meal passed in relative peace. Angela Quincy, Alberta’s stepdaughter, came in to clear the mess that Blake had made with his first breakfast, and he looked a little embarrassed.
Angela, in her way, was as much of an enigma as Alberta was. She showed her age, unlike Alberta; she was about fifty, as soft and cuddly as Alberta was lean and angular. She was very pretty, could even have been called beautiful, despite the wrinkling of her skin. She was the most serene person Dione had ever seen. Her hair was brown, liberally streaked with gray, and her eyes were a soft, tranquil brown. She had once been engaged, Dione would learn later, but the man had died, and Angela still wore the engagement ring he’d given her so many years before.
She wasn’t disturbed at all by having to clean egg off the wall, though Blake became increasingly restless as she worked. Dione leisurely finished her meal, then laid her napkin aside.
“Time for more exercises,” she announced.
“No!” he roared. “I’ve had enough for today! A little of you goes a long way, lady!”
“Please, call me Dione,” she murmured.
“I don’t want to call you anything! My God, would you just leave me alone!”
“Of course I will, when my job is finished. I can’t let you ruin my record of successful cases, can I?”
“Do you know what you can do with your successful record?” he snarled, sending the chair jerking backward. He jabbed the forward button. “I don’t want to see your face again!” he shouted as the chair rolled out of the room.
She sighed and lifted her shoulders helplessly when her eyes met Angela’s philosophic